A London Home in the Nineties

by Hughes, M. V. ;

  ‘Conveyancing seems a dull job,’ I remarked, after one of these spells of dictation.

  ‘Yes,’ said Arthur, ‘you just have to peg away at it. It’s like your hemming round the bottom of a skirt—you have to be careful, however monotonous it is, for if you slip just one stitch you may get tripped up.’

  ‘A lot of it seems mere verbiage to me,’ said I.

  ‘That’s what most people think, and that’s why we toast the man who makes his own will. He thinks he can put his intentions so simply that he doesn’t need a lawyer, and we get a harvest of litigation to clear up his mess. No, believe me, every word in a legal document is necessary. If you leave out some absurdly remote contingency in a will, that contingency will go and happen.’

  Arthur’s casual manner with a paper marked URGENT surprised me. ‘Oh, there’s no hurry about that; they usually mark things urgent; it doesn’t mean anything.’ ‘What do they put, then,’ I asked, ‘if it really is urgent?’ as I raked my mind for a stronger word. ‘Tuesday morning, 10.15,’ said Arthur. ‘Quite simple.’

  ‘What do you do,’ I asked, ‘when they’re in a hurry for an opinion, and you want more time to make up your mind?’

  ‘I ask for more information on some point, and while they are getting it I can look up other cases, and so on.’

  What I enjoyed most was the discussion of some impending case. The point of view of Arthur’s client always seemed to me unassailable, until he trained me to throw all my weight into the enemy’s camp. ‘It’s not a bit of use to agree with me,’ he would say. ‘I know my good points. What I want you to see is the horribly good point of the other chap, or some horribly weak one of mine.’ He told me how many a case was ruined by the failure of a client to confess some silly thing he (or usually she) had done. This, of course, would come out in cross-examination, and no defence would be ready. People seemed to imagine that anything written in haste would be destroyed in haste. ‘Remember this, Molly, never write a letter to anyone when you are angry, or if you have any difference with them at all. If write you must, always have legal advice.’

  There was hardly a case that didn’t widen our knowledge of things in general. For instance, there was one about brandy, in the course of which even Arthur’s hair was raised at the revelations as to its manufacture. Certain ‘brandy’ was sold without any ingredient that one would expect. Arthur surmised that if grapes had ever entered it at all, they must have gone through on stilts. Our conclusion was that the emergency brandy we always kept in the cupboard must be the best.

  One case was almost amusing from the mere fact of its being completely hopeless. ‘Why didn’t you settle it out of court?’ said I. ‘Of course I tried to, but the other side know they are in the right and they are out for blood.’ ‘Well, what can you do then?’ ‘Oh I’ll give the defendant a run for his money. I’ll tousle them up and down a bit.’ It was in some County Court at a little distance, and I was surprised to see Arthur back earlier than usual, and brimming with quiet joy. He related with glee how he had actually ‘pulled off’ the case. Everything was in trim, many witnesses for the plaintiff had been drawn from far, the stage was all set, and no possible loophole for the defendant, when Arthur popped up and submitted quite quietly that, owing to the precise locality of the accident, the court was the wrong one for the case and had no jurisdiction in the matter. The whole thing collapsed at once, and the game was not worth the candle for its renewal elsewhere. ‘And serve the man right,’ said Arthur, ‘for not being willing to settle.’

  This matter of settling out of court meant a severe mental and moral struggle sometimes. Arthur was for the plaintiff once in a case against a very well-known public man, who had treated an attractive girl in a shabby and dishonourable way. Although it was ostensibly a question of payment for service rendered, the man had written such a lot of ludicrous letters that Arthur knew that he could make London laugh by quoting from them, and that it would easily be a cause célèbre, and the making of him. We both got excited over it. But one evening Arthur returned in a dejected state. ‘I’m afraid we shall have to settle,’ said he. ‘I can’t entirely trust my client to have told me all that she herself said or wrote, and they are offering a tremendous sum to settle.’ ‘Yes, but’, I protested, ‘if they are offering such a lot it means they are in a big funk. Can’t you risk it? It would mean such a chance for you.’ Arthur’s anger with me for suggesting that he should put his own interest before his client’s was for me a means of measuring the temptation he had overcome.

  Criminal work he determined not to touch, and this decision was final after his one experience of it. A fellow barrister was in a hole with clashing cases, and asked him to take on the defence of a girl charged with child murder. How he slaved one night over a book on medical law! He had been to see the poor girl in prison, and the whole thing had been too much for his feelings, and there were actual tears of indignation in his eyes as he told me about it. By throwing doubt on the evidence of the prosecution as to the state of the child’s lungs, and showing that there was a possibility that there had never been full life at all, he managed to get the woman discharged. ‘No doubt,’ he said to me when he came home, ‘they were glad enough to be given any excuse to clear her. But it’s no wonder that the men who take up criminal work take to drink. I hear that they all do. No more of it for me.’

  Work was always uncertain; frequently two cases would be on at once, and then perhaps a fortnight would go by with nothing on at all. I was told in later years, when things were rather more steady, that early disappointments had been many and bitter; but these had been hidden from me, while good news was told at once. In fact my only grievance against Arthur was that he protected me from the unpleasant rather too much. I came from an enduring stock, and would have preferred to share the rubs as well as the boons. One rub, however, he felt obliged to disclose. We had been having a specially pleasant little dinner party at home, with Mary Wood’s eldest sister and her husband. They were both artists and travellers and provided delightful conversation till late in the evening. When they had gone Arthur said, ‘I’ve got something rather dreadful to tell you…I had my pass-book in today from the bank, and what do you think we are reduced to?’ ‘Tuppence ha’penny?’ said I. ‘Well, not much more, only just over ‘It might be worse,’ said I, ‘anyhow we aren’t in debt for anything, and some fat work is bound to come in soon.’ And so it did, for not long after this he came home with the news that a brief had come in marked 100 guineas.

  I suppose it is the same in every calling, that a man suffers almost as much from its petty annoyances as from the uncertainty of the income it brings him. Arthur’s Leaders not only tortured him by sometimes spoiling a good point, but would often expect the Junior to do all the preliminary work without contributing much themselves. ‘Look at this so-called opinion he has sent in,’ said Arthur, in exasperation, one day. ‘I should think he did it while he was shaving.’

  In his early days at the Bar Arthur had suffered much from unprincipled solicitors, who got advice and hours of work without intending ever to pay for it, knowing that a barrister has no redress for this kind of theft. Although he had many staunch friends among solicitors, such knavish treatment soured him towards them as a class, and yet he was obliged to ‘nurse’ them. He told me an absurd story of a barrister friend of his who invited a solicitor to lunch and plied him with food and wine, and was not a little surprised to find his guest anxious to pay for the whole thing. It was not until the coffee and cigar stage that they discovered that both of them were barristers under the delusion that the other was a solicitor.

  The patronizing manner of some of the solicitors was their most annoying feature, and the fiery-tempered Arthur needed all his self-restraint to keep decently polite. One night I was awakened by a violent kick. ‘Hold!’ cried I, ‘what now?’ ‘Sorry, darling,’ came a sleepy voice, ‘I thought you were a solicitor.’

  XII. Bronwen

  § 1

  WHEN life hum
s happily along one day seems much the same as another, in retrospect. But an unusual event revivifies the preceding incidents, and the trivialities just before the greatest day of my life stand out as though they had happened yesterday.

  One morning in the late spring of ’98 I went out to do my usual shopping in Portobello Lane, and captured a fine piece of cod for the evening meal, and some shrimps to make a sauce for it. Then I bought oranges at the famous greengrocer’s, where I had on one occasion bought eight good oranges for a penny. The pudding was to be Arthur’s favourite, a marmalade one, called Sir William Watkins. This was always a bit of a gamble, but to my relief it turned out finely, and as it was backed up by cheese straws and coffee, all went well. Then we settled down to our usual game of chess. Annoyed at being beaten, though it was my usual fate, I demanded another game and a chance for revenge. No good. So then Arthur settled to his law work and I to my ‘parlour work’. We gave this name to any kind of sewing, from a story of my mother’s. She had invited an old servant to come to tea, and the reply was: ‘Thank you, mum, I’ll come when I have a bit of parlour work that I can bring.’ When she came she brought a pair of her husband’s trousers to mend.

  I felt a bit tired and went to bed early, and about half an hour later I tapped on the wall to summon Arthur for a consultation, as I called it. He thought he had better have a second opinion, and ask the doctor to look in. Since the latter lived quite close he was soon on the spot, and dispatched Arthur to fetch the nurse (who, of course, like all nurses, was at another case in some remote suburb). Before starting Arthur called up Emma and told her to light the fire in the special room prepared for the emergency, to get me into it, and to sit with me until he returned with the nurse. Emma was as excited as myself, delighted to speculate with me on all the possibilities ahead, as we chatted away the time in the firelight. Most reluctantly she returned to bed when the nurse arrived, at two o’clock.

  Even at that forbidding hour the energetic little nurse felt that she ought to be doing something or asking where something was. I understood the expression ‘snatches of sleep’, for all I got that night was really snatched from a running fire of questions, washings, combings, and straightenings. A spread of small bustling surrounded the nurse like an aura. All this was at least cheerful and even funny, but what I found hard to bear was being kissed in a repetitive way, like a duck at its dinner.

  At this point, like the Baker, ‘I skip forty years’. It seemed like years, for it was not till eleven o’clock next morning that my first-born appeared. The doctor was very kind; he guessed that I had never had such a long and hard spell of work before. ‘Now you understand,’ said he, ‘the full force of the word “labour”.’ At this I told him of a German governess I knew who greatly admired the Litany. ‘It prays for everyone, even the poor governess.’ I was puzzled, and asked which petition she meant. ‘For all women labouring of child,’ she replied. (By the way, it was this linguist who thought that ‘Keep to the left’ on our street shelters meant ‘Asylum for those left behind’.)

  Perhaps there may be some greater peaks of happiness for mortals, but I have not heard of anything that could come up to the joy of that morning. It compensated to overflowing for all the trials and difficulties of our ten long years of waiting. And it was a girl that Arthur had been secretly longing for. How swiftly and quietly he came along the passage, afraid to shout or laugh or touch or come too near…putting all his energy into rubbing his hands and gazing at this marvel. The babies I had so far seen were little wrinkled, crumpled things, dull red all over, but this was a lovely creature, pink and white, and smooth as a shell. I remembered how my mother used to describe her astonishment at the beautiful face of her second boy—quite unlike the others of us; so I concluded that this vision might actually be my own child and not some heavenly changeling.

  Arthur had much difficulty in tearing himself away to the Temple, but got home ‘brave and early’, as the Cornish say. ‘We had a celebration,’ said he, ‘champagne at the “Cock”; and I’ve been sending telegrams like mad. And I’ve put a notice in The Times. Atkin advised this, for he says you get more than the money’s-worth in gifts from advertising firms.’

  And so we did. To Emma’s delight every post for several days brought some exotic soap or baby-powder, some patent food or delicate ointment, and a photographer sent us even a photograph of the notice in the paper.

  Arthur was so wrapped up in his daughter that his friends in the Temple teased him a little, and accused him once (to his shameless delight) of carrying a bottle of milk in his briefbag. ‘Of course I do,’ he replied, ‘one mustn’t be unprepared, one never knows, and I have a serious job on—I’m founding a dynasty.’ One evening as he was brooding over his new possession he said, ‘You know I shall be fined for this?’ And he explained that when they were on circuit any man who had had a stroke of luck was always fined; there were other strange old customs—for instance, at dinner during his first circuit he was asked which he would have, Old Testament or New. Not knowing what it meant he said, ‘Old’, as it sounded more solid. And so it was, for he had to drink right off a tumblerful of port. The New would have been only claret. As for the impending fine, I suggested that he shouldn’t mention his daughter at all. ‘A sound piece of advice,’ said he, and laughed.

  It was a grand time for me. My room was gay with violets and daffodils, letters of congratulation poured upon me, as well as presents of food dainties, little garments, cot accessories, and so on. My brothers, Tom and Dym, were vociferous in their pleasure at my having achieved a ‘lil maid’ (to quote Tom’s Cornish term of endearment). Neither Arthur nor I had a sister, and my brothers’ children were all boys, so that a girl in the family was something of an event. A letter that I valued very much came from Mrs. Ruck, of Pantlludw; after hearty congratulations she added: ‘Ask Arthur to repeat to you a Welsh proverb which says, “It’s wise in having children to have a girl first.”’ She ended with a strong wish to hear the new friend’s name as soon as it was settled.

  ‘Well, what about her name?’ said Arthur as we read this, for we hadn’t discussed the matter at all.

  ‘She is Welsh,’ said I, ‘and there is no doubt what her name must be. She is Bronwen.’

  ‘Do you really mean that?’ exclaimed Arthur, glowing with pleasure. The name of his old home in Wales was Fronwen, which means ‘the shining hill’, and the corresponding name for a girl is Bronwen, which means ‘the shining breast’. I felt sure, from the way he used to speak it, that this name made him love her still more.

  Among my visitors Yetta was first on the scene, having started immediately on receipt of the telegram. She, too, was delighted at its being a girl, and I believe from the first moment looked upon the little mite as a future student of Bedford College. Yetta was none too satisfied with the nurse, and made some useful alterations in the room and the ‘doings’ generally. She was a clever nurse herself, leaping to any emergency; in fact she had wanted to take up nursing as a profession, but it had not been considered respectable! She took me for several drives in the Park, as soon as I could be persuaded that the nurse could look after baby in my absence.

  Mary Wood was, of course, constantly in and out, providing much comic relief. I saved up for her the nuggets of wisdom that fell from the nurse’s lips, as well as her tactful attempts to put me right in points of pronunciation. Thus, for instance, I had said that one of my presents was ‘very research’ and a few minutes later the word recherché was brought casually into the conversation. She was a kindly soul and spared herself no trouble, but oh how glad we were when her month was up, and we could again be by ourselves.

  Emma had the country girl’s usual wide experience of baby welfare, and was proud to give me the information I required. ‘How often should we change her nightdress, Emma?’ I asked. The reply was immediate and unequivocal—‘Oh, a baby always looks to have a clean one twice a week.’ She knew also the odd names for the odd garments that babies wore in that era—such as
‘bellyband’ (about a yard of flannel that was swathed round and round and safety-pinned on) and ‘barracoat’ (a garment that I would as easily make as describe).

  Naturally in the preceding months I had sought information right and left. My most promising source was Alfred’s wife, who had not only a doctor for a husband, but also three children. She took the greatest interest, and loaded me with kindness, but in the matter of what to do about a baby she was, or pretended to be, a blank. ‘When I was married,’ said she, ‘all I knew about a baby was that it had something out of a bottle, and I know little more now. I soon discovered, however, that they are always getting some little thing the matter with them, and then getting quite right again—all on their own. The great thing is that you mustn’t fuss about them.’ This seemed at the time to be too negative to be useful, but later on I found it by far the most useful bit of advice that I had.

  Alfred himself was still more reticent. When Arthur applied to him for advice he said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t let Molly see a book on the subject. They’re all useless, and for the most part harmful.’ But in spite of this strong negative Arthur couldn’t resist buying Advice to a Wife, which he found in a remote corner of a railway bookstall. It looked rather weary and second-hand, and if it hadn’t been for Arthur’s eagle eye for any kind of book it would probably soon have been scrapped. The author was a certain Pye Chevasse, who afforded us merriment if not profit. To him a lady was as delicate as a piece of Venetian glass. She was advised, in the circumstances, to have fresh air in her bedroom (obviously an extreme measure); should the open window be too severe, the door might be left open, and if she were nervous a little chain could be attached to it. Alcohol was not advisable, but she could take her two glasses of port every day with impunity. The chapters were headed with quotations from the Bible, Shakespeare, Spenser, and other worthies, but each was twisted from its original intent; thus, ‘Making a sunshine in a shady place’ headed a chapter on indigestion. I wish I had kept the book, but Arthur told me to destroy it lest Emma should get hold of it, although there was nothing but its title to excite anyone but an antiquary.